Welcome to the 2018 Spring Season! If you haven't been keeping up since World's, a lot has changed. The pre-season patches this year has been one of the biggest updates that League of Legends has had in years, although keeping most of the same style champions in meta, the Runes/Masteries system has been entirely reworked bringing a brand new coat of paint to the 8 year old game.

Beyond the in-game changes the biggest sweeping change this year comes to the North American LCS region, who have now franchised the entire region, with a majority of teams being now held by either major E-Sports organizations or NBA teams. The NA Challenger Series has now been replaced by an academy system held by the 10 active LCS teams as a "Farm league" for their main rosters, and every roster in the NA LCS this spring has 3-5 roster changes. The last big change to NA is the switch from a Best of 3 series back into a Best of 1 series which is quite controversial for many reasons. NA's sister region Europe have also adapted the Best of 1 format, although the EU region has yet to franchise the region (Rumors of franchising or breaking up the EU LCS into multiple, smaller regions are still strong!) Outside of the LCS, all other major regions retain their previous formats.

What are the implications of the Spring Season?
The top teams in all regions during the Spring Season will compete at the Mid-Season Invitational. The Mid Season Invitational (MSI) has moderate to major implications for Worlds in Season 8 (2018 Season) in that it determines which regions will obtain seeds in Pool 1 and which "Wildcard" region will obtain a secondary seed (The best performing region obtains two teams in Worlds 2018). Winning the Spring Season usually only means you will become your region's representative at the MSI, although all teams will receive circuit points towards Worlds 2018, it is generally the lowest stakes and when most teams will go through wide changes to see what works and what doesn't before prepping for Summer and World's.

Korea continues to be League of Legends most dominant region. In 2017 undefeated tournament titans SK Telecom T1 were finally dethroned at the World Championships by another previous winner, Samsung. While SK Telecom had shown many weaknesses coming into the finals, Samsung, who had retained their roster from the 2016 Championships showed almost no signs of weakness and easily stomped the 3-time World Champions, becoming 2-Time World Champions.

The major story going into this Spring is the momentum of the KT Rolster Superteam, who crushed all opposition during the off-season KeSPA Cup and the vengeance of SKT's Faker who in his 5-year career has only failed to make World's once, and only lost a championship once. Many teams shuffled players around, and a couple players left for other regions but Korea hasn't suffered any major losses this year. Some significant players have returned to Korea and for the first time are making their major debuts in Korea (IgNar, Trick, and Rush namely) who had barely made a name for themselves before playing overseas.

KSV E-Sports (Formally Samsung Galaxy)
CuVee | Ambition / Haru* | Crown | Ruler | CoreJJ
After becoming runners-up in 2016 and having a middling year in Spring and Summer, Samsung have managed to pull the biggest upset in LoL e-Sports history and dethrone three time champions SKT. The roster remains the same for three years in a row, but their sponsorship has changed hands as Samsung looked to get out of E-Sports and sold their organization to KSV E-Sports, a relative newcomer to the scene but have been making waves all the same by buying many of the top teams in multiple games. The roster is still spear-headed by Ambition, one of the longest tenured veterans in Korea and has solid anchors in every other role. Their play-style is a very controlled and methodical, although fairly flexible in that they have potential for any role to pop off and hard carry on their own.

SK Telecom T1
Untara | Blank | Faker | Bang | Wolf
For the first time, SKT have failed at winning a World Championship after making it into World's. A lot of the blame fell to both their All-Star Jungler Peanut, who had been picked up from their former rivals ROX Tigers in the beginning of 2017 and neutered when joining the organization, and SKT's bottom duo of Bang/Wolf. In a very bizarre off-season, SKT chose to let go of Huni who had through most of World's been SKT's second-best player, as well as Peanut and has chosen to focus on the two lesser-known players Untara and Blank in addition to keeping Bang & Wolf in their bottom lane. In addition, "The Right Hand of God" Bengi has re-joined the organization as assistant coach, while the legendary Kkoma has become the organizations' main coach. SKT's biggest strength has always been the ability to adapt on the fly, although it's been considerably weaker in the previous year. -- arguably due to clashing styles with their Top/Jungle and the demotivation of their ADC.

Longzhu Gaming
Khan / Rascal* | Peanut / Cuzz* | bdd | PraY | GorillA
It's arguable that Longzhu Gaming were the second-best looking team at World's 2017, with so much raw, new talent in their top-half of the map along with the most solid bot-lane in Korea in Pray/Gorilla, but they were easily defeated by eventual champions Samsung. In the off-season, Longzhu retained their entire roster which was already fairly strong, but picked up an outstanding rookie in Rascal and re-united Peanut with former ROX Tigers team-members Pray/Gorilla. There should be very little adjustment time for Peanut in Longzhu Gaming and it's easy to predict the organization will be a top 3 team in the Spring season. Their playstyle is very explosive with any given member able to hard carry a game.

KT Rolster
Smeb / Ucal* | Score / Rush* | Pawn | Deft | Mata
KT is still hailed as the Korean "Super-Team" and their off-season has been no different, signing one of the best solo queue players in the region UCaL, and Rush's return to competitive play, along with new coach SONSTAR. The roster on paper still looks like one of the strongest teams, but they've yet to prove they've got the synergy to really bring a championship home, always doing well but never making it to a World Championship. Their playstyle is extremely all-in, but will often fail to teams with better macro and are generally impatient.

Afreeca Freecs
Summit | Spirit / Mowgli* | | Kuro | Kramer | Tusin
In 2017 Marin returned to the LCK promising to destroy the SKT organization and Faker, but in 2018 after failing to deliver his promise, Marin has returned to China leaving a band of misfits who had a lot to prove in the previous season without a leader. It's hard to predict that Afreeca will do as well this season without Marin, as Spirit and Kuro are seemingly winding down in their careers and leaving the team without a definitive carry

Jin Air Greenwings
SoHwan | UmTi | Justice / Yaharong | Teddy | Wraith
Although Jin Air had the standout ADC of 2017 in Teddy, the organization still continues to fail to capture any major relevance that their Starcraft team has, leaving them in the middle of the pack. Jin Air is an odd organization that will regularly bounce between top 3 and bottom 3 within the same season, but there's no denying how powerful of a carry Teddy can be. The deciding factor in Jin Air's future will undoubtably be their new mid laners.

MVP
ADD | Beyond | Ian | MaHa | Max
It's puzzling to see MVP's roster and their usual standings in Korea. They've got some of the stronger players in their roles, but can't seem to form a cohesive team that's able to regularly take out stronger teams. I would argue that almost anyone on the roster could be exceptional in a stronger organization but they seem to be more like EU's old Copenhagen Wolves who are breeding the region's strongest players stuck on one of the weakest teams.

BBQ Olivers
Crazy | Trick | Tempt | Ghost | IgNar
Probably the most exciting all-new roster in Korea, the organization is bringing in EU's top imports Trick and IgNar who have both performed at the very top of the region in the previous years. I can't expect them to be at the very top of the region, but at worst they'll probably be taking the odd series off top teams every once in a while with their very aggressive and unusual picks.

Kongdoo Monsters
Roach | U Jun | Edge / Han* | Ssol | Secret
Kongdoo Monsters, the previous Naijin organization continue their fall from grace without a single standout player on their roster this season. While most rosters include at least one player to watch, Kongdoo Monsters is the equivalent to that challenger team full of edge players that are too good to compete in the challenger series but not good enough to compete in the main league.

ROX Tigers
Lindarang | Mightybear / SeongHwan* | Crow / Lava* | Sangyoon | Key
ROX Tigers are another team losing the off-season, picking up more unproven rookies with barely recognizable players held down with Key, who was part of the one-time roster ESC Ever who for a very short window looked like one of the most exciting rookie teams in Korea.

Format: Best of 1

North America is generally the most popular region to watch on the forums, but they continue the tradition of very shaky World's results. The biggest change since last season is that the region has now been franchised, giving teams a more "stable" environment to pursue sponsors and introduces revenue sharing for all current teams. During the off-season, teams had to submit applications into the league showing Riot what made them stand out as an organization and what they would offer. At the end, Phoenix1, Dignitas, APEX, and Immortals were all denied re-entry into the LCS and replaced with NBA teams 100 Thieves (Cleveland Cavaliers), Clutch Gaming (Houston Rockets), and Golden Guardians (Golden State Warriors) as well as E-Sport titans Optic Gaming. In addition to the LCS, the challenger series has been reformatted and includes only "Academy" teams form the ten main LCS teams.

Almost every single team in the region has gone through major roster changes, replacing an average of 3 players on the returning major teams, many of which feature completely new rosters altogether.

Team Solo Mid
Hauntzer | MikeYeung | Bjergsen | Zven | Mithy
TSM are undoubtably the most popular team in NA and are almost always in contention to win the NA LCS title every season. After a very disappointing World Championship run, TSM have replaced Sven, Doublelift, and Biofrost with Rookie of the Split MikeYeung from P1, and one of the famous and consistent bot lanes from Europe in addition to coaches Ssumday and Lustboy.

Cloud9
Licorice | Svenskeren | Jensen | Sneaky | Smoothie
In a somewhat puzzling move, Cloud9 have let two of their most solid players go in the off-season after being the most successful team at the World Championships and picked up an outstanding young rookie in their top lane, and a very middling jungler from TSM. You could argue that Bjergsen's playstyle is what held Sven back in TSM but it's hard to say he's going to come to C9 and flourish with a midlaner that plays almost an identical style that demands a lot of jungle pressure.

Counter Logic Gaming
Darshan | Reignover | Huhi | Stixxay | Biofrost
If I could describe CLG's roster in one word, it would only be "solid". They probably won't set the world on fire and don't have any players that will seem to go above and beyond other teams, but none of their players are likely to have breakdowns mid-match either. They're all-around above the average, but it's hard to find anything exciting about the roster. Because of this though, you can probably expect them to win a lot more than they lose.

Team Liquid
Impact | Xmithie | Pobelter | Doublelift | Olleh
The Liquid has been completely redone thanks to Liquid Steve buying the contracts of something like 15 players and selling them off intermittently until he settled on this. The roster itself looks like it has the potential of the previous Immortals roster, but like that roster before them, they're all about potential. All five players look to be the top 3 in their roles, but the big difference maker here is going to be how their playstyles mold together and how quickly they can adapt to playing with teams who have been playing together longer, like TSM or CLG.

FlyQuest
Flame | AnDA | Fly | Wildturtle | Stunt
In years past, FlyQuest would have been full of challenger players that were just filling out a roster to keep their slot in the LCS, but with all the shake-ups in the off-season they've managed to get themselves a decent looking roster. It's hard to say how this roster will play out, since Flame and Wildturtle both have a habit of playing forward, while Fly is a fairly reserved midlaner

Echo Fox (AKA Breaking Point 2.0)
Huni | Dardoch | Fenix | Altec | Adrian
Rick Fox must have lost his mind in the off-season, signing five players all very prone to being heavily tilted, most notably Dardoch and Fenix who had already exploded on Liquid just recently. Although most players on the team are very skilled individually, Rick Fox may just bankrupt himself paying psychologists to get this team on the same page.

100 Thieves
Ssumday | Meteos | Ryu | Cody Sun | Aphromoo
This team is a mis-match of P1 and Immortals that look like they could either make top 4 or bottom 4. The team has some of the most recognizable players in the scene but it's hard to say if Meteos, Ryu, or Aphromoo still have enough left in the tank to carry a team all the way to the finals. I'm still fairly excited to see how this team plays out, especially because they have some of the better looking merch out of the new organizations

Clutch Gaming
Solo | LirA | Febiven | Apollo | Hakuho
This is it everyone, this is your most boring roster in NA. Other than Solo I can't really call any of the players BAD, but outside of their comfort zones they're probably mediocre at best. Apollo/Hakuho are a very solid bot lane who rarely feed, but rarely pop off, Febiven is definitely the opposite who will either feed or famine, and LirA is probably one of the better junglers in the region and we've seen what he can work with using a worse roster, but he hardly had an ego like Febiven on his roster before either.

Golden Guardians
Lourlo | Contractz | Hai | Deftly | Matt
Hai is once again trying to prove he can take a group of rag-tag players and make it into playoffs. This time, although he has three other veterens including Contractz who may be one of the better junglers in the region, he's dragging along Matt and Lourlo from Liquid and a total rookie in Deftly. Can Hai out-smart his competition or will his mechanics and wrist deteriorated too far at this point?

By the way there's probably a good chance that Gambit Gaming featuring Edward and Diamondprox + PVPStejos & Kira from Albus Nox Luna are gonna make it to World's so that's prob the EU team you wanna root for

Your bones don't break, mine do. But for some reason, you and I react the exact same way to sacks. We hit too fast, we choke. We get some in our head, we drown. However unreal it may seem, we are connected, you and I. We're on the same curve, just on opposite ends. They called meMr. Glass.

I'm still sad about Phoenix 1. I'd love to know why they fell apart so hard,

What was even the point of the promotion tournament if NA is franchising next year?

I'm still sad about Phoenix 1. I'd love to know why they fell apart so hard,

What was even the point of the promotion tournament if NA is franchising next year?

I don't know but it sounded like there were just management struggles in P1 including some players like Ryu or Arrow being very homesick and for some reason nobody that shares a team with Xpecial are every a happy team. Sometimes when you have a really rough start and players start to get harder on themselves it's incredibly hard to pull yourself back up from that. Despite P1 doing so well at Rift Rivals they couldn't really pull that experience back with them afterwards and continued to tilt. There's been a dozen different Reddit posts about the team where various players say they'd want to just start fresh with a new team, and it's hard to really place blame on anybody since they're all still pretty decent players.

There actually was no point to the promotion tournament, I think Riot had originally said that there would be a $3 Million discount to all teams currently in LCS then said that there was no discount anymore (Or technically that everyone got the discount anyway) so all I can figure is that current LCS teams might just get priority over outside organizations?

When I die, I hope they say I made the eSports industry a better place than I made millions of dollars.

Closed out the old thread, new thread looks great. I'll probably watch Worlds this year but even reading about the format I don't really understand it. Are they just inviting a ton of wild cards to mash up in the first group stage to try and compete for seeds instead of the old 8-team wild card battle?

Closed out the old thread, new thread looks great. I'll probably watch Worlds this year but even reading about the format I don't really understand it. Are they just inviting a ton of wild cards to mash up in the first group stage to try and compete for seeds instead of the old 8-team wild card battle?

It's closer to taking all the third seeds from all major regions (Except Korea) and lumping them in with the Wildcard play-ins. It's a good move imo, because it would prevent teams that barely coasted into a third seed from regions like NA or LMS from getting a direct seed versus a Wildcard region that was much stronger but didn't have the chance because until recently it was just capped at two Wildcards total for groups.

It's also a fun poo poo-show before the main stuff starts because the Wildcard tournaments are almost always fun to watch and you can see how they stack up against China, EU, NA, and LMS. Last year the Wildcard regions did much better than some of the major regions so giving them a better chance to play-in is awesome

I'm already all in for the Gambit/Albus Nox Luna team without even reading about any of the others.

Did SKT just sandbag the entire season so they could demoralize every team in the bracket on a playoff romp?

Probably not intentionally, they had a number of issues during the regular season that I assume Kkoma beat out of them for playoffs.

Huni/Peanut used to being the all-stars on their previous teams and given the option of hard-carrying versus playing more supportive roles on SKT
Bang tilting and practicing a lot less then having to deal with Korean Reddit trolling him over something he had said like 5 months prior
The general meta just not being good for SKT throughout most of summer
Other teams throughout the summer split just being legitimately better than SKT at the time, or at least good enough to take a set off SKT.

Seriously though, the summer season was stacked as far as talent goes. Bottom tier teams had standouts that could take control of the game if given an inch like Jin Air's Teddy or Ever8's Malrang/Cepted

But yeah, SKT was also probably doing the thing they do sometimes where they take things a little less seriously than they should until it's World's Season and then flip the switch and just dismantle everyone. I don't know if any team in the world practices harder or more efficiently than SKT does when they're getting ready to go to World's.

Speaking of, SKT vs KT Rolster will determine the next team to qualify for World's via Korea's second seed (Circuit Points) although it's still entirely possible that one or the other won't qualify for World's still. Whichever team loses will have to win the Gauntlet coming up which is a strange situation for Longzhu because despite winning first place in the regular season there's still a REALLY good chance they don't make it to World's.

Speaking of, SKT vs KT Rolster will determine the next team to qualify for World's via Korea's second seed (Circuit Points) although it's still entirely possible that one or the other won't qualify for World's still. Whichever team loses will have to win the Gauntlet coming up which is a strange situation for Longzhu because despite winning first place in the regular season there's still a REALLY good chance they don't make it to World's.

The only part that is necessarily true in this statement is that the winning team will be qualified for Worlds with a guaranteed minimum of the 2nd LCK seed. The losing team in the semifinal will still qualify as second seed if LGD loses in the finals since LGD is sitting on 0 circuit points.

The only part that is necessarily true in this statement is that the winning team will be qualified for Worlds with a guaranteed minimum of the 2nd LCK seed. The losing team in the semifinal will still qualify as second seed if LGD loses in the finals since LGD is sitting on 0 circuit points.

You worded it weird but you're right.

If SK Telecom beat KT and Longzhu, then SKT will get First seed, KT will get second seed based on Circuit Points, and Longzhu will have to win the Gauntlet against Samsung, Afreeca, and MVP

"When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently."
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

Great OP, good job choco!

BTW, reminder to the players who participated in the summer money league, don't forget to send in the mystery skins! Unless you're just waiting for the release of Star Guardians 2017 instead in which case by all means take your time because I'd love to get my mitts on star guardian MF. :P

Last chance to clear out the weaklings/win your way in instead of buying in.

not even that since teams aren't guaranteed anything, including an invite, if they are in lcs. what they are guaranteed if they're in lcs is a revenue share of the costs for teams to buy in to the lcs. so you'd be guaranteeing yourself some decent cash i guess but not even an invite into lcs for fall. also the "save $3M" thing was a bit misleading, as it turns out that if you're in LCS your spot (should you get an invite) costs $10M instead of $13M. so what was the point of challenger series and relegations? a bunch of money maybe. that's it.

I'm still sad about Phoenix 1. I'd love to know why they fell apart so hard,

Pure speculation, but I think it was a combination of:

Their Summer Split success depended very, very heavily on MikeYeung being able to snowball the early game to get them a solid lead. Their overall macro play was, to put it politely, not that great, and they didn't seem to be able to recover from bad early games at all. When the meta shifted away from Lee Sin and Nidalee towards Sejuani and Maokai, MikeYeung couldn't do this any longer, and so they just got ground into paste unless they lucked themselves into an early lead.

Ryu's almost certainly homesick (and maybe Arrow as well) and will probably head back to Korea whenever his contract's up. Getting cold feet post-Rift Rivals put them at a serious disadvantage, because although Pirean's a decent player, he has nowhere near Ryu's skill and veteran experience.

They seemed to lack a consistent, level-headed shotcaller. I saw Xpecial throw games away twice by going for insanely bad hooks when there was no reason to go for them. They'd go for high risk Barons and do disorganized, low percentage plays like that Taliyah + Kled combo against a Tristana with Rocket Jump ready. No one seemed to be guiding the team overall.

All of this combined likely tanked team morale, and when team morale is low, getting anything approaching a win is a Herculean task.

Aphro is past his prime, same as LemonNation. Only CLG are a decent team while Flyquest are a bad team.

Aphro's still the second best support in NA, by my reckoning, and Olleh only beats him out because of his consistency and broader playstyle. Aphro's biggest weakness is that CLG is almost completely oriented around him being the big shotcaller and playmaker, and when Ardent Censer Janna is meta, he just can't do that. It doesn't help that he looks about as uncomfortable playing healing/shielding supports as MikeYeung looks playing tanks.

Speaking of P1, Xpecial posted a vlog, and it sounds like he's planning on retiring from professional play. He's a passionate guy, and being on a collapsing team like P1 really seems to have gotten to him.